


I Will Face God and Walk Backwards Into Hell

by completetheory



Category: Darkest Dungeon (Video Game)
Genre: Ending Fix, Nonbinary Character, Other, Psychological Horror, Queer Friendly, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28649613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/completetheory/pseuds/completetheory
Summary: Sapient beings do not experience reality; they construct reality.This is bad news for local Eldritch monsters in your area.
Relationships: Jester/Vestal
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	I Will Face God and Walk Backwards Into Hell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MadScientific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadScientific/gifts).



> Shout out to DD youtuber Fourtwoflow for circumventing the game's final act with cheeky math exploits. Partially dedicating this fic to them, partially to the usual suspect. 
> 
> SPOILERS for the entire Darkest Dungeon endgame.

Bitter frost blanketed the hamlet that early morning, when the vestal and the jester arrived at the gates half dead and nearly hypothermic. Each supported the other by turns, though there was barely any strength left in either's limbs.

The inn, illuminated with warmth, was ill-received to their entrance, which blew in the detested cool air from outside, and the soldiers - crusaders, men at arms, houndmasters - all gave bitter grumblings about the intrusion.

"Please, we need a room. Just for the night." The vestal's pleas were equally ill-received when the barkeep understood neither she nor the jester could pay.

"I don't feed my family upon credit, and I've had debtors in the past who died before they could give their due. The abbey is just yonder..."

"We've walked sixteen miles already," The jester muttered under their breath, "And in service of this place, more the fool am I." 

The barkeep frowned, readying a rebuke, but the vestal intervened, "I'm sorry. Is there nowhere closer?"

"None that could host you, and even the Abbey will want their due." Struck by inspirational cruelty, bouyed by the apathy of the noble soldiers nearby, who were so busy drinking and lusting after bawds that they could scarcely give further attention to the two pitiables, the innkeeper added, "Perhaps the Light will provide."

A moment passed in which the jester looked to be marshalling all their strength, possibly to leap the counter and commit one final act of violence against the man, but then fortunately a heavy hand came down upon the wood and left coins in its wake.

"For tonight," A slightly drunken voice from under the mask and helmet, "I am the Light." 

The innkeeper looked up confounded, squinting at the bounty hunter, whose heavily armored sillhouette gave nothing away. 

The vestal, delighted despite her exhaustion, remarked, "There is Light in all of us." 

"Most of us, at least." The jester murmured, eying the soldiers nearby with raw contempt.

The bounty hunter laughed, and then gestured one of the bawds who had been on their arm, "My dear, please stoke a fire for these wretches. It is a passionate fantasy of mine to imagine you thus." 

The bawd also laughed, smacking their padded shoulder, "G'wan with you, Pinel." She moved to comply, which the vestal was relieved to see, and did not dare look at the innkeep again. The jester leaned on her for support, so lithe and almost lost in their own rags, like a scarecrow in motley.

"Pinel," Repeated the jester, "Should I compose you a heroic theme?" 

At the idea of repayment, the bounty hunter seemed... uneasy. "You owe me nothing. Both of you, consider it a drunk's delight in belligerance, I can easily make up the difference in my work."

They moved off, then, to reconvene with their small party - made up of highway- and grave-robbers, unsavory sorts who kept their own back table away from the polished steel of the lawmen. The vestal, had she not been exhausted, would likely have pursued this line further, but she let their benefactor escape back to a friendly, jeering table who ribbed Pinel's weakness with obvious affection. She and the jester went upstairs to the room, and she was grateful, herself, for the way her companion clung to her even in sleep. 

The things they had both seen!

Morning brought with it some dulling to the edge of horror, and the vestal composed herself. Breakfast - also paid for by the hunter, it appeared - was eggs and bread and butter, and the jester picked at it from the bed with folded legs.

"What shall we do, Ferrieres?" The jester asked, "We have few supplies and not a single toy to barter for gold. No one will follow us out there again, if we should be stupid enough to go ourselves." 

"It appears hopeless, but you see the kindness blossoms even here." She indicated the food, "If our benefactor will accept nothing in return, then we must pay it forward to another in need of our help." 

The jester rifled through their pockets and pack. "I could _busk_ , but I'd prefer to do that in summer." 

"Indeed. I shall go to the Abbey and speak to the caretaker." Ferrieres departed, and the jester sat moodily for a time, until a knock on the door interrupted their thoughts.

It was the bounty hunter, who seemed disappointed, in a reserved way, not to see the vestal. The jester wondered if they too lusted after 'forbidden fruit', or whatever the uninitiated assumed about the Light's devotees. Marriage alone forbidden to them, the Light yet permitted many a sexual adventure, and so they were less unattainable than most understood. The jester knew this intimately, and was always amused when others considered them _chaste._

"Hallo, have you changed your mind about payment?" The jester could not help the cynical undertone, a dog kicked far too many times to trust the petting hand, "I could spin a ditty for you, now I've been fed and thawed." 

"No, nothing like that." Pinel appeared embarrassed. "I only wanted to check and see ... if you were both well."

"We will survive, for now. --Perhaps we'll get a chance to help you another time." 

The jester thought that was that. It was not long after that Pinel and another arrived, a king with a mask of tempered gold, and a broken sword that Campbell offered to replace once they'd put a few dungeons worth of loot under their belts. Every time, the offer was denied. Joscelin was a strange individual, and private about the condition of leprosy they suffered. But they did seem to warm to Ferrieres, and that alone was worth quite a bit to Campbell. 

Eventually they had to face the facts. Nothing they were fighting or killing or stealing from was the cause of the problem, of the rot that infested the land. Some of the entities were more to blame than others, but some were remarkably blameless, and seemed to just be... existing. Thoughts, minds, and methodology turned to the area the Hamlet's plague doctors identified as 'the source of the sickness', and the group entered the dungeon with the fullest expectation they would not survive.

The Ancestor himself was underwhelming. A severe man, proud-backed, humility a rod he had spared himself, that had spoiled him instead, and he drummed his fingers impatiently on his folded arms as if he were somehow practicing patience with these troublemakers.

Pinel and Joscelin went for him first, with the whetted impatience of starved hunting hounds, and as they ripped and tore, Ferrieres readied her holy light and Campbell contemplated mortality.

Campbell contemplated mortality a great deal more when the Ancestor transformed into an enormous beating heart, slowly plucking at errant notes on their lute. 

They drew the line at _succumb to the inevitability of entropy, rot, and despair,_ stopping a few notes into an ancient ballad called 'Tubthumping', by Chumbawumba. No one could see the expression on their face, nor did any combatant particularly notice their polite 'ahem'. Everyone was desperately fighting for their lives, to be fair (save for the heart, whose mouth was still running), and Campbell politely moved themself to the front. 

"Excuse me," They sidestepped _Know This_ , as they knew quite enough already and didn't think someone spouting off like this could teach them anything further, "Sorry, I can't help noticing you're assigning your personal flaws to 'humanity' as a whole. Didn't you establish in your letter that you did all this because you were too bored to build a bridge or a hospital? Shouldn't you assign some worth to digging ditches, planting potatoes... ministering to the sick?" 

"These are a childish pursuit, who is unaware of the futility of the inexorable void!" The heart did briefly pause in its assault to answer these challenges. 

"You see, I don't believe you. I think it's far more childish not to recognize the valor of the profane." Campbell's fingers moved automatically, picking out the beginning notes of the 4 Non Blondes 'What's Up', following their own independent train of thought even as the jester's mind plucked the words to arrange into sentences. "The game ends. Should we not play? Should we not laugh, because silence follows? You coward. Come to me." 

The heart could not particularly move, as it was bound, but it did lash out, and the jester dropped the lute, remembered the war against the tyrant in a momentary haze, that same revolt against cruelty, abuse, and the 'darkness' that this being insisted was inevitable in the heart of mortals. They came back to themself rejoined in purpose, more sure for the challenge against their belief that theirs was the truth. The noble course. 

Heroism was perhaps not always a dagger stuffed into foul places, whatever the knights and their valets may suppose, but occasionally, communication broke down and there was, against the nihilism of the fearful, only one final recourse. Denial. Violent denial, if the nihilists were rude enough to behave like witnesses, going door to door with their beliefs, turning people's skin inside out and whatnot. A sharpened blade was an eloquent answer to such arrogance. 

Campbell gazed long into the abyss and the abyss gazed back and frankly Campbell found the abyss wanting. It gave no child's shrieks of delight, no quiet loving sigh of satisfaction. It did not stand outside a hospital room and play sweet notes to the dying. It was too empty for all of these things; it was a nest, yes, the progenitor of humanity, but the eggs had long since hatched and flown, and the nest yet wanted credit to become their grave.

Campbell was not even aware they had killed it, but their fingertips hurt and someone had picked up the lute and put it with detachment back into their hands, they were playing - what was this song? This was that song. The melody of merry millions, screaming ecstasy into the void. The heart beat no more. 

It howled, 'your victory is temporary, your voice will end, your life too will find its finish'. 

Of course. Of course. And so what? Did that make the vestal's warm and kindly arms around their brittle bones any less real in this moment, which held within them the meaning of eternity? 

"Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer."


End file.
